


Presence

by dopeyjoe



Category: Led Zeppelin
Genre: M/M, Paranormal, Some sort of a fisherman au, WritersMonth2020, based in the early 1900s, or late 1800s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:55:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25745452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dopeyjoe/pseuds/dopeyjoe
Summary: Jimmy finds a body of a man washed up and gotten stuck in his fishing net, and upon burying him with the help of his neighbour on the beach, he finds that the dead man’s presence has now latched onto him. On the isolate highlands, there is nobody to turn to for help.
Relationships: Jimmy Page/Robert Plant
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: House of Riot for Writers Month 2020, Writer's Month 2020





	1. Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever LZ fic And Also my first WritersMonth submission, and I’m terrified, but I’m also very excited to finally join a House of Riot event!! I’ve been just silently looming in the back of the groupchat for months, it’s time for me to do my part.  
> This is a fisherman AU, based on sometime between 1890 and 1920 (I never got that deep into the details). It contains ten chapters, each based on that day’s prompt. Every chapter is tied together, forming this story. Enjoy.

The ocean trashed just by him. Even though the evening was growing cold and the wind had picked up, biting trough his jacket, Robert felt at home. There was something safe about the white foam that twirled up close to his feet, a thick mass that soon broke apart just to gather up again. He sucked in a breath and searched, but for the life of him could not spot the small fishing boat in the foggy horizon. The entire beach was draped under a fog, so heavy he could feel it on his skin. Just light, cool and moist. It would be heavier if it wasn’t for the wind, so heavy he wouldn’t be able to find his way back. He hummed softly, along to some song that happened to be brewing in his mind that moment, incoherently mumbling in strings of words in the middle of the melody. It was a pity he didn’t have a pencil or anything to write on. He had left with such a hurry. Of course he could kneel down and write the drafts of lyrics on the wet sand, just to watch them wash away. But that’s the way it’s gonna be.  
Before he could dwell on that too much, there it was. A barely visible shape in the distance, getting clearer by the second as it was crawling towads the shoreline from the ocean. The boat’s name was Rover, a shabby old thing. The small dock was stationed about twenty metres from where Robert was standing, and he turned on his heels to start his walk to go stand therd and wait instead. He was still humming, tucking away hair from over his eyes. The moist air just made his curls wilder, an annoyance to be sure.  
He was quite as fast to get to the dock as the boat, a bit faster. The wet wood creaked under his boots, slippery and softened by years of beating weather. As soon as it was within earshot, a voice that was very silent and shaken called out;  
”Robert?”  
”I’m here.”  
”I... I need your help with something.”  
Jimmy wasn’t within the reach of his eye, but Robert knew from the tone of his voice that something was wrong. He must have been crouching in the backside of the boat.  
”You need to dock it first, I can’t just jump on-”  
”It’s urgent!”  
Jimmy wasn’t the demanding kind, but there truly was a shade of panic to his voice now. So Robert took the rope that hung from a pole, and loosely tied it around the bow so that there was at least something keeping it still as he jumped over onto the platform from the side. The surface was slick under him, and he feared slipping and falling overboard. But Jimmy had sounded very shaken, and he could have been hurt. So Robert took a hold of the railing and hoisted himself over onto the floor of the boat.  
It was almost immediately afterwards that the atmosphere shifted; it was eerily quiet now, and the fog seemed to knit in tighter, and the air felt wrong in his lungs. And as Robert took those few careful steps closer to the standing shelter, a stench so strong it sent him to cover his nose and mouth plummeted at him. A musty, festering, wet smell of death.  
”Jimmy?” His voice cracked, muffled by his sleeve.  
”l’m right here, I need your help to get him to shore.”  
And there he was, indeed. As Rober peered over the wall of the shelter, he could see the man. Kneeling on the wet floor, hastily wrapping something in tarp.  
”What happened? What’s-”  
”He was in my nets. I think he’s been dead for a while.” Jimmy’s voice surely was disturbed, even sorrowful as he nodded towards the tarp. It covered near the entire length of the man, only leaving out his feet. One of them was still tucked in an old boot, the other bare and blackened from the toes.  
Robert didn’t quite know what to say, but he had a sudden and strong urge to ask to see the man’s face. He swallowed dryly.  
”Should we... bury him?”  
”I think so.”

They must have worked on it for two hours, as the sky was now near black. There had luckily been a shovel at the fishing hut, Robert didn’t have to run home in the dark to get one. Digging the hole was easy in comparison with dragging the corpse off the boat; even though tied in the tarp, his body had gone soft and bloated in the sea, and it was hard to get a hold of him. The smell though, the smell was the worst part. But eventually they had made it. The man laid in the sand, some three metres away as Jimmy took the first turn at digging. When he ran out of strength, Robert took the shovel in turn. And after hours of sweating and huffing and struggling in silence, they determined the grave to be deep enough. Not the standard, that was for sure, but a metre down was better than not down at all. At least the seagulls couldn’t get him there.


	2. Illness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of cheesy but I love it. Also I’m bad at writing dialogue in between these two for some reason, so if it feels forced I apologise! Thank you sm for the support on this fic, I really enjoy writing it and I’m glad to see y’all enjoy reading it too <3

The night had grown deep black as the two made their way up the hillside. Their hands ached from the night’s work, the undersides of their fingernalls blackened with dirt and rot. The smell wouldn’t leave their clothes, but they had almost grown numb to it. Jimmy was shaken, perhaps most shaken Robert had ever seen him; his face had flushed pale, eyes vacant, body stiff as he marched up the thin path.  
They exchanged very little words that night, but one of the short conversations their uneasy minds could uphold was Jimmy quietly asking if he could spend the night. His own house was up behind another hillside, and though the walk was less than five minutes, he dreaded going alone. So Robert let him stay.  
Strider barked and growled at them from the moment they walked in trough the front gate. It was out of character, very odd. It’s blue eyes gleamed in the thin moonlight that got to the yard trough the heavy fog, and the bark was sharp, as if terrified. But the closer Robert got to the dog, the clearer it was; he wasn’t barking at them, but something in between. Something around. Something that quite clearly was there in the dog’s eyes, but not in the eyes of the two grown men.  
Jimmy swiped his dirty fingers on the thighs of his pants, and sucked in a shaky breath.  
”It’s just me, boy. Just me.”  
Strider didn’t even seem to see him, to hear him, and Robert figured there was something in the hills.  
”He’s probably just smelling a rabbit.” He remarked uneasily, as they walked up to the porch of the small house. It was two storey and made of stone, but only had one room upstairs. The walls grew ivy, and the wet grass glistened in the yard around them. Robert had left the door unlocked, as he often did. The area was isolate, and the dog had staid in guard. There was no fear of intruders. He held the door open for Jimmy, who wearily dragged his tired body inside. He seemed quite ill, but Robert reckoned that it was all shock. The stiffness, paleness, weak movements. He had actually vomited earlier on the beach. And Robert felt terrible too, or course. But not quite like Jimmy did.  
It was dark inside of the house, but it smelled like home. Like old wood, saltwater, coffee grounds and wool.   
”Come on, boy.” Robert called for Strider to get inside for the night, but the dog refused to come up the porch stairs. His fur was standing up, tail low in between his legs, and his eyes were nailed to the darkness of the house. Past his owner, past Jimmy, somewhere in the shadows. He was no longer growling nor barking, but the aggression and fear was clear.  
As Strider showed no signs of coming in, Robert shrugged his shoulders. There was shelter in the shed if it’d start raining.  
”He’s acting off, I’ll take his sheep hide out in the wood shed. I’m sure he’ll be calm in the morning.”  
”Sure.” Jimmy was striking a match with mutch difficulty, as he stood by the dark kitchen table. His hands were shaking. As a flame was finally lit, he brought it to a single lantern. It’s warm glow made the room feel somehow safer. In this light, he looked down at his clothes and hands; dark smudges of dirt and god knows what else stained his button up, his trousers, his hands and sleeves. He wondered if there was any on his face. Robert had taken Strider’s sheepskin and bowl of water outside, and could now faintly hear him talking to the dog, who still seemingly refused to move. It was too dark outside to see now, Robert hadn’t taken a lantern with him. He knew his own yard well enough to travel it blind. But from the open front door that was almost directly across the big wooden table, Jimmy could hear Strider’s low growl. It unsettled him- the dog was the friendliest, kindest animal he had ever come across. He wondered if the smell of death that the drowned man’s corpse had left on their clothes scared him.

A moment passed before Robert returned, meanwhile Jimmy had helped himself to a kit of water. He reckoned it was meant for drinking, so he made sure to pour a fourth of it into a smaller bowl before taking off his shirt and searching for a towel to clean up the worst. Under his clothes he was mostly just sweaty, but dirt smudges and rotted muck had found it’s way onto his pale chest. He tried not to think that this muck had once been a part of a living breathing human being. He felt a need to vomit again, but knew that he had already emptied his stomach entirely on the beach just less than an hour ago. And he was still sweating, but this was cold sweat. Like when you have a high fever, or are terrified beyond reasoning. The towel he found had been hanging on the kitchen wall, probably meant for dishes, but he was sure Robert wouldn’t mind him using it. And if he did, Jimmy was more than happy to gift him a new dish towel.  
He scrubbed himself with such fury, it started to seem almost obsessive. In the orange glow of the lantern, he rubbed his skin with so much friction it turned red at places. And he felt an odd need to cry. He was a sensitive man, of course. And burying someone who had been dead in the water for so long that he had gone bloated, fish had eaten up half of his face and his toes and fingers had gone black, was something that would mess with even the less sensitive folk. He thought of this, and gave himself a permission to cry.  
” Jimmy..?”  
Robert had come back now, and as Jimmy snapped out of his scrubbing, he realized that he had almost skimmed a layer of skin off of his forearm with the rough towel.  
”I’m alright.”  
”Sit down.”  
”No, I’m alright.” He demanded. Robert was across the table from him, and his eyes were very soft then.  
”I’m sorry you had to… we had to…” He closed his eyes for a moment.  
”It’s not that this was our fault.” He continued. And Jimmy knew this, of course, but it didn’t make him feel any less bad about it.  
”A man died. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t know him, he’s dead and we couldn’t even give him a proper burial.”  
The peep of his voice was weak as he set the towel back into the water to wash off the sweat and dirt. Robert walked up to him, slow. He looked at Jimmy’s hand in the murky water, moving the towel around for a bit. How he was trembling all over, cold and sad and all. Then he looked up the man’s face; he was pale as a ghost, fresh pearls of sweat in his hair and forehead glistening in the lantern light.  
”Would you please sit down?” He tried one last time. ”You look like you’re pushing a fever.”  
And for his surprise, Jimmy did finally obey. There was a stool by the table that he settled on, breathing unevenly.  
”Let me clean you up.”  
”You don’t have to-”  
”You have dirt on your face. Just let me.”  
And Robert took the towel from the kit, squeezed it a bit, and had his fingers brush up the edge of Jimmy’s bearded chin as he lifted his face to see. He was mostly sweaty, but there was a darker strike on the left side of his face across his cheekbone. Robert pressed the towel on his skin softly and brushed, his movements were slow and gentle. And as he absent-mindedly moved the man’s long hair off of his forehead, he could feel him burning up.


End file.
